Michigan

Students prepare to take a computer-based test in this Michigan Department of Education photo. State testing rules prohibit media access to students during the Smarter Balanced testing, a department spokesperson said.
(Courtesy photo MDE)

It's the wave of the future and we need our kids to be ready for the 21st century, and testing in the 21st century is online.

LANSING -- The Michigan Department of Education says the future of student testing is an exam produced by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. For some students across the state, however, that future has already arrived.

Some lawmakers in the state legislature question if the test is the right move for the state, but preparations are still underway for the test's official roll-out next spring. More than 94,000 Michigan students have started taking at least one Smarter Balanced test as part of a nationwide field test, with about 84,000 having completed testing.

The field test is not only about validating the test questions, it's about ensuring the state's schools are prepared to give a test that uses computers instead of pencils and paper. The Smarter Balanced exams have been designed from the ground up over the last three years to be given via computer, but a December 2013 survey of schools found that only about half the state's school districts had the technology necessary.

Technology wasn't an issue at all for Reeths-Puffer Schools near Muskegon, according to Terri Portice, the district's director of teaching and learning. "We had not one problem," Portice said.

Reeths-Puffer tested 800 students in third, eighth and 11th grades, Portice said, and the district experimented with using laptops over wireless connections in multiple areas across the district's buildings, as well as using dedicated computer labs, to see how the equipment would respond.

"To not have any problems with our equipment, we have been extremely pleased," Portice said. "It's the wave of the future and we need our kids to be ready for the 21st century, and testing in the 21st century is online."

Because the tests are given through a web browser and not specialized software, any web-enabled device can be used to take the tests, including tablets.

Eileen Grant-Ball, director of curriculum for Charlotte Public Schools, near Lansing, said that her district learned some lessons about what equipment to use after students at Charlotte High School participated in the exam.

"It was very seamless as it got going," Grant-Ball said. "What we did find was that it's best to use some kind of device with a keyboard, because with the iPads there's just too much fatigue."

Grant-Ball said Charlotte did not have problems with infrastructure, and credited advance preparations by district staff and teachers to enter student information and practice administering the exam as helping to avoid issues on test days.

"We had minimal problems the days of the test," Grant-Ball said.

Critics of the Smarter Balanced exams have questioned the cost to give the tests, but the Michigan Department of Education estimates that the exams will cost roughly the same as the outgoing MEAP exam.

Jan Ellis, a communications specialist with the department's Office of Accountability Services, said the department estimates the total cost for the MEAP, the other components of the Michigan Merit Exam, the ACT college entrance exam and workforce readiness tests will be $26.7 million for 2014.

By comparison, the cost for 2015 with the Smarter Balanced exams replacing the MEAP is estimated at $29.6 million because the state will have to purchase some pencil and paper versions of the Smarter Balanced test for districts that cannot give the online exam.

Once the state can give the Smarter Balanced exam entirely online, the cost is estimated at $27 million, Ellis said.

The legislature ordered the education department last fall to examine all the state's options for testing, and a report authored by the department in December concluded the Smarter Balanced test was the state's only option for the next three years.

Opponents of the test, including Rep. Tom McMillin, a Rochester Hills Republican who is mounting a bid for Congress, have said the legislature is exercising its "appropriations authority" to decide which test the state will give by inserting language in budget bills for next year requiring the education department to give the MEAP instead of Smarter Balanced tests.

A provision in the House version of the state's school aid budget conditions state funding on giving students the MEAP exam, and obligates the education department to produce the test.

State Superintendent Mike Flanagan has said his department, which stopped development work on the MEAP in 2010, could not have a test ready to give students next school year. The exam also would not satisfy the state's federal waiver from No Child Left Behind requirements, posing a threat to federal funding totaling more than $1 billion, Flanagan said.

Some lawmakers have also expressed concern about the length of the tests, saying the need for computers to give the exams and the types of questions asked will require students to spend hours testing and grind school schedules to a halt.

Portice said based on the experience the Reeths-Puffer schools had, giving the test in future years should not be difficult.

"We could do a whole grade level within a week if we wanted to keep it in that time frame," Portice said. "I don't see why anyone wouldn't be able to finish in the time allotted."

Because the test is given online, students can test for as little as an hour at a time and have their progress saved, Portice said, simplifying scheduling, especially with special education students.

Students also have access to highlighting and strikethrough tools for the language arts exams and drawing tools for the mathematics exam, which Portice said students were using without prompting while taking the exams.

"The kids really had no problems with the technology," Portice said.

The field test window closes nationally in the first week of June. More than 10 million tests have already been given across the 21 states participating in the field test, according to statistics from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.